The ethnopharmacological literature: An analysis of the scientific landscape

Abstract

The research into bioactive natural products originating from medicinal plants, fungi and other organisms has a long history, accumulating abundant and diverse publications. However no quantitative literature analysis has been conducted. Aim of the study: Here we analyze the bibliometric data of ethnopharmacology literature and relate the semantic content to the publication and citation data so that the major research themes, contributors, and journals of different time periods could be identified and evaluated. Materials and Methods: Web of Science (WoS) was searched to identify relevant publications. The Analyze function of WoS and bibliometric software (VOSviewer) were utilized to perform the analyses. Results: Until the end of November 2018, 59,576 publications-linked to 'ethnopharmacology' indexed by WoS, published since 1958 in more than 5,600 journals, and contributed by over 20,600 institutions located in more than 200 countries/regions, were identified. The papers were published under four dominating WoS categories, namely pharmacology/pharmacy (34.4%), plant sciences (28.6%), medicinal chemistry (25.3%), and integrative complementary medicine (20.6%). India (14.6%) and China (13.2%) were dominating the publication space. The United States and Brazil also had more than 8.0% contribution each. The rest of the top ten countries/regions were mainly from Asia. There were around tenfold more original articles (84.6%) than reviews (8.4%). Conclusions: Ethnopharmacological research has a consistent focus on food and plant sciences, (bio)chemistry, complementary medicine and pharmacology, with a more limited scientific acceptance in the socio-cultural sciences. Dynamic global contributions have been shifting from developed countries to economically and scientifically emerging countries in Asia, South 4 America and the Middle East. Research on recording medicinal plant species used by traditional medicine continues, but the evaluation of specific properties or treatment effects of extracts and compounds has increased enormously. Moreover increasing attention is paid to some widely distributed metabolites, such as curcumin, quercetin, and rutin.

An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants used by the Tengger tribe in Ngadisari village, Indonesia

“…The interaction between humans and plants has been long described as one of the factors influencing human civilization, especially in medicinal fields [ 1 ]. Documentation of the medicinal use of plants through ethnobotanical studies enables the development of contemporary drugs and treatments as well as for plant conservation [ 2 , 3 ].…”

Phytochemical, Antioxidant and Antibacterial Evaluation of Melastoma malabathricum L.: an Indonesian Traditional Medicinal Plant

“…aspirin, morphine, and pilocais rapine. 26 Melastoma malabathricum L. is native to tropical and subtropical regions, in temperate Asia and Pacific island. 27 M. malabathricum L. has been reported to treat various types of ailments, for instance: dysentery, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, cuts and wounds, infection during toothache, stomachache, and thrush.…”

First, Do No Harm (Gone Wrong): Total-Scale Analysis of Medical Errors Scientific Literature

“…In respect to the type of publication ( Figure 2 ), we noted that 70.9% of the total publications were original research articles, whereby the temporal analysis in the three time periods revealed an increasing share of original research articles with 55.9% in the 1990s and before, 68.7% in the 2000s, and 72.4% since the 2010s. Despite this trend indicating increasing amount of original research in the scientific area of medical errors, the total share of 70.9% is still a bit lower than the original research article shares of other recently analyzed biomedical scientific fields such as neuropharmacology (original research articles share of 72.3%) ( 14 ), biotechnology (73.2%) ( 7 ), and ethnopharmacology (84.6%) ( 15 ). Probably this lower share of original research articles is due to the intrinsic difficulties associated with the medical errors field of research (e.g., difficulties in reliable identification of medical errors, differences and discrepancies in definitions and used terminology, and diverse complicating societal, legal, ethical, economical, and behavioral aspects) ( 16 – 18 ).…”